Low-key medic awarded high honors for bravery

Julie Ruff, By Sig Christenson - Express-News :
May 18, 2010

U.S. Army Sgt. Joseph Lollino looks over at his wife Ashley after receiving the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart medals during a ceremony at the start of Army's medical symposium at the Convention Center Monday.

U.S. Army Sgt. Joseph Lollino looks over at his wife Ashley after receiving the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart medals during a ceremony at the start of Army's medical symposium at the Convention Center Monday.

Sgt. Joseph Lollino had an edge of sorts when he began his 68-Whiskey medic training course at Fort Sam Houston.

Only 20 when he arrived on the post in 2005, certified as an emergency medical technician, he knew how to keep a low profile.

“In 68W, he tried to do things right but not stand out,” said Army Reserve Sgt. Cayleb Lee, 25, of Bend, Ore., a fellow medic and his one-time roommate. “If you stand out, things get a little harder.”

Lollino stood out in a big way in Afghanistan almost two years ago, helping repel an ambush, treating wounded soldiers and protecting one of them with his body.

He stood out again Monday. At attention on a stage before 2,000 other soldiers, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor.

It took only seconds for Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, the Army’s surgeon general, to pin the DSC onto Lollino’s chest, but the standing ovation accented by whoops and whistles lasted nearly a minute. Lollino, a guy who hates big crowds, tried to keep a poker face but smiled once or twice.

The speech after he received his DSC, along with a Purple Heart, was true to form: short, just two sentences. He thanked his wife, parents and old unit, 3rd Platoon, Company C, 1st battalion (Airborne), 503rd Infantry Regiment.

“It’s a good feeling,” he said later. “I did what any medic would do.” Perhaps.

Lee, who was with Lollino from basic through medic training and later roomed with him in Italy, calls his friend “one of the greatest guys I’ve ever met.” He would say that what happened June 20, 2008, was typical of his buddy, if no other soldier.

Before that day dawned, then-Cpl. Lollino awoke knowing his column of 30 or so armored vehicles would roll through “ambush alley,” an infamous road sandwiched between two mountain ranges and rocky outcroppings, and dotted by trees — terrain tailor-made for insurgents. What he and other GIs on the mission didn’t know was that they were embarking on a 14-hour journey near the Pakistani border that would test Lollino’s vow to bring all his men home alive.

Now 25, Lollino got his EMT certification at Elgin Community College in Illinois before joining the Army. He’d always wanted to jump out of airplanes and figured the Army was the perfect place to learn, in part because the training would be free.

Smiling while pondering the memory, he said it wasn’t the adrenaline rush that made him love the airborne or want to be a medic in an infantry unit.

“It’s just a great group of guys. It’s more the mentality,” said Lollino, a two-tour veteran of Afghanistan and a native of Hoffman Estates, Ill., a Chicago suburb.

“It’s like a big family. Everybody goes through things that you’re scared of, and as long as you’re scared of or disliking something all together, everybody’s on the same page,” he said.

Part of Lollino’s column had already made it when the first rocket-propelled grenade was fired. Behind the wheel of a Humvee, Lollino drove into ambush alley, began to help the wounded and fired back at the insurgents, dropping two 30-round clips. Three of the wounded soldiers were hit by shrapnel, and a fourth suffered from smoke inhalation.

The enemy fire intensified, and Lollino was hit by shrapnel, too. But he covered one of the wounded with his body. He loaded the wounded in another vehicle as the convoy fought its way out of the ambush.

It was a straight-up gunfight with no close-air support, but the GIs made it to their objective. Lollino, though wounded, stayed with his troops and drove back through ambush alley on the return to their base.

“I just wanted to do my job, fix the guys, make sure no one died. Everybody has a family we all wanted to go back to,” Lollino said when asked what he was thinking.

Then he fell silent.

“He doesn’t like to be the center of attention. The truth is he went above and beyond his job in that instance, but he always goes above and beyond,” said Lee, who served in Afghanistan at the same time as Lollino but was with another unit.

“He doesn’t think of it as anything special, and he doesn’t expect a lot in return for it.”